


all in

by spqr



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Interview, M/M, Marriage, Post-Civil War, Reunion, bleeding heart Tony
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-20
Updated: 2018-04-20
Packaged: 2019-04-25 13:29:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14379627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spqr/pseuds/spqr
Summary: What matters is that Steve only hates him 99% of the time now, and the other 1% of the time they laugh together and fight side by side and they’re friends.Tony’s used to having to wring little bits of love out of people.He can do it.





	all in

It’s not that no one’s ever loved Tony. It’s just—

 

Maria explained it to him. Howard didn’t love like other people. He loved like lightning, in brief moments of brilliance. Sometimes he hurt you and sometimes he disappeared and sometimes he did more damage than good. But it’s just his nature, Tony. It’s just the sort of man he is. Everyone loves differently, Tony, and your father, he loves you _so much,_ his love is so, so bright, that he can only show it for a few minutes at a time, or you’d both burn up.

 

Tony was going through a chemistry phase. “Like magnesium?”

 

His mother patted his head absently. “Sure, hun. Like magnesium.”

 

#

 

“People always assume I’m an asshole, but I’m not,” Tony says.

 

Christine doesn’t utter a word; her raised eyebrow says it all.

 

They’re in Italy. Florence, maybe, or Milan. Brunch, at a little café overlooking some cobblestone piazza with a fountain or some shit in the middle. It doesn’t really matter. What matters is the tape recorder that means they’re _on the record_ and the twelve empty mimosa glasses between them, most of them Tony’s. He’s not drunk, but he may be— _may_ be—in a bit of a talkative mood. That’s all.

 

“I _have_ an asshole,” he elaborates, unnecessarily. “And it’s a very popular asshole, you know. Don’t disparage it, Everhart.”

 

“I would never,” Christine says dutifully. She’s smiling, but just a little bit. Later, she’ll laugh herself silly over the recording, but right now it’s all professionalism.

 

“Good,” Tony says. “Good, I want it on the record that I have a _very popular_ asshole. But that doesn’t mean I _am_ an asshole, you know? People just—they assume. And okay, yeah, maybe I _used_ to be an asshole, but you know what they say about assuming. It makes a…makes an…an”

 

“An a-s-s out of you and me,” Christine supplies.

 

Tony raises his eyebrows. “You know that?”

 

“Yes. I went to kindergarten.” She takes a graceful sip of her mimosa. “It’s a pre-rec for Yale's School of Journalism.”

 

“Who’d’a thunk,” Tony muses. “Christine Everhart, in kindergarten. I figured you just sprung fully-formed from your father’s skull, like—Artemis.”

 

“Athena,” Christine corrects, but Tony’s already slugging down an entire mimosa in one gulp. His regional partners meeting must have really gone badly. “We’re not here to talk mythology, Tony.”

 

“’Course not. Pick your poison, Athena. Italian clean energy initiatives, the models I went dancing with at fashion week, the daring exploits of the intrepid Avengers, my _raging_ superiority complex, my even _more_ raging daddy issues, the forty points SI stock dropped last week—“

 

“You said you _used_ to be an asshole,” Christine cuts him off. Tony nods, but he’s watching her carefully now, like he knows she’s about to snare him in a trap. “Big of you to admit that, even in the past tense.”

 

“Thanks.”

 

“What changed?”

 

Tony opens his mouth, then closes it. She can see it his eyes, that he’s searching for a good lie, but he’s buzzed and full of champagne, and even Anthony Edward Stark has brief moments of verismilitude, once in a blue moon. Christine’s just lucky she’s got a tape recorder out to catch it. Immortalize it. Because Tony looks at the tabletop for a long moment, then looks back up at her, all false bravado.

 

“Steve,” he says. “I met Steve.”

 

#

 

It’s not that no one’s ever loved him, it’s just—

 

Tony knows his mom’s bullshitting him. He’s five, he’s not a dumb four year-old anymore. He watches for those brief moments of brilliance, those lightning strikes. He thinks maybe it’s like watching a storm late at night—the second you turn away, that’s when the flash happens. But, statistically, if you just keep watching eventually you’ll see it, only…Tony doesn’t.

 

Howard throws things and rages and calls Tony a _dumb kid_ when he can’t balance an equation. He doesn’t pay attention to Tony. Not a good kind of attention, anyway.

 

But, Tony supposes at five—Maria must love him, to have made up that lie. And that’s better than nothing.

 

#

 

Steve hates Tony.

 

There’s not really any one thing that does it. Instead, there’s a laundry list of things, probably something like three million items long. Gun to his head, Tony’d guess the first few were arrogance, disobedience, insubordination, flippancy, _swearing_ , the way Tony treats women (Steve can’t get his head around the idea that it’s _not necessary_ to propose to every girl you sleep with), substance abuse, et cetera, et cetera.

 

Yeah. Just one more person who assumes he’s an asshole. Spangles never really got over their first meeting, for all that they were under the influence of Loki’s sceptre at the time. Whatever. Tony never really got over it, either, and two can play at that game.

 

If Steve hates him, Tony can hate Steve right back.

 

Easier said than done, as it turns out. The man _is_ Captain America, after all. Tony had his cartoon face on his sheets when he was little. They’d been a gift from “Santa,” from that brief happy period after Tony figured out Santa wasn’t real and _before_ he figured out Santa was not, in fact, his parents, but was actually his mom’s personal assistant.

 

Like a fucking masochist, Tony invites everyone to stay in the tower. Steve moves his motorcycle into the garage and his reinforced punching bags into the gym and his easel into the 1940s-style apartment Tony hired a historian to design. And his dumb dorky smile into every _goddamn_ waking moment of Tony’s consciousness, because _of course_ something that bright can’t be contained in a meagre few minutes of daydreaming.

 

Then some shit happens, some battles and some bonding moments and whatever. It doesn’t really matter. What matters is that Steve only hates him 99% of the time, now, and the other 1% of the time they laugh together and fight side by side and they’re _friends_.

 

Tony’s used to having to wring little bits of love out of people.

 

He can do it.

 

#

 

It’s just—

 

Pepper, okay? Pepper loves him, in her own way. It’s just, the way Pepper loves is: she needs him to change. She’s a transformative lover, and _eugh,_ if he ever said that out loud she’d probably smack him uspide the head. But Pepper’s always been very organized, she likes things where she likes them, how she likes them, when she likes them, and she’ll force those things to go along with her plan if it looks like they’re going to zig when she told them to zag.

 

She knows what she wants in bed, and she takes it. She tells him what to do, where to put his hands, his tongue, when to _get in, get inside me_ now, _Tony._ And he does what she says, because (she’s Pepper, she loves him) she always has such fantastic ideas, and it feels good, letting her boss him around. Take the reigns.

 

But Tony thinks she forgets sometimes that he’s not _things_. He’s not going to break his goddamn legs just to fit into her perfect box, and if that’s a deal breaker, then. Well.

 

#

 

Falling in love with Steve is a bad idea. Like, capital B _Bad._

 

All that unimportant stuff happens, and they might even be friends 2% of the time, now. But it’s a very precarious 2%, and Tony doesn’t want to backslide.

 

So what, if Steve sketches the armor with careful, reverent strokes. So what if he teaches Dum-E to paint, so what if he chuckles and tells the bot _you’ve got potential_ , so what if he frames the mess and gives it to Tony to hang up on the wall.

 

So what if he explains in vivid detail the way he dreams of strangling Fury with his own eyepatch, when he makes them do paperwork. So what if he’s a massive hypocrite who swears like a sailor and then turns around and says _Language._ So what if he’s got a sense of sarcasm to rival Tony’s own. So what if he takes dancing lessons and spends hours twirling them all around the common floor to what he calls “swell tunes” from the ‘40s.

 

Tony wants to—well, here’s the issue.

 

Steve in his bed sounds like a great idea. Steve breathless and flushed, tangled in Tony’s zillion-thread count sheets. Steve deep inside him, or wrapped around him, Steve’s heart pounding and his lungs heaving and hips stuttering.

 

But there’s a _better_ idea:

 

Steve dragging his fingers through Tony’s bed head, smiling softly. Steve pressing tired kisses to the side of his face after a long battle, Steve peeling him out of his undersuit and joking _I haven’t smelled anything_ that _bad since the war._ Steve laughing, quietly, their faces close together, Steve pressing gentle barely-there kisses to his eyelids, the bridge of his nose, his cheekbones, and finally, _finally_ his lips. Steve, stripped down to skin and tenderness.

 

That’s the issue.

 

No one’s ever loved Tony that way. Tony’s never loved anyone that way.

 

But he wants to.

 

#

 

Italy, 2017. Some city, some café, doesn’t matter.

 

Christine gapes. “Steve? As in, _Captain America_? That Steve?”

 

Tony smiles wistfully. “Yeah. That’s the one.”

 

#

 

He’s never _actively_ a jerk. It’s just…

 

For a long time, Tony loves _everything_ , and people assume that means he loves _nothing_. He loves going out and bringing someone new home every night, loves the novelty of the sounds they make and the way their bodies feel. He loves new experiences, bad ones and good ones. He loves Pepper, even if she doesn’t love him yet. He loves Rhodey, even if all he ever gets for it is the occasional clap on the shoulder.

 

He loves his bots and he loves the way a fresh blueprint looks and he loves getting oil on his fingers, spending days in his lab, the way his mind gets sharper when his stomach’s growling. He loves a fast, easy car underneath him and a fast, easy woman on top of him, he likes the burn of good scotch in his throat, the sear of cheap vodka, the flash of the cameras and the smiling faces and the way he can say one word and a whole room cheers.

 

And maybe that’s fucked up. Maybe that makes him an asshole. Maybe he’s only supposed to love one thing, but if that’s the case he hasn’t found it yet.

 

#

 

Here’s the issue:

 

Steve doesn’t want _anything_ from him. Steve’s always there, even if sometimes he doesn’t want to be. He doesn’t disappear. They’re friends…at _least_ 15% of the time, and when Steve touches him his hands are gentle, even if his word’s aren’t, always. Tony’s stopped being as big of a jerk since this whole _team_ thing started, but it’s not because anyone asked him to, it’s just exposure. Honest, wholesome character growth.

 

Steve doesn’t want him to change.

 

Steve’s laughing, covered in fire extinguisher fluid, saying, “It’s fine, Tony. Really, don’t worry about it. I shouldn’t have chosen such a bright orange color, I should’ve known it would spook him.”

 

Dum-E wheels around sheepishly next to him, still waving the fire extinguisher. Steve fixes him with a stern _Captain America_ look. “Good job, Dum-E. Safety first.”

 

Pepper would’ve given him hell, if one of his bots doused her. Howard would have made him strip Dum-E down to parts to find the issue. Maria would’ve laughed charmingly, and never come down to the lab again.

 

“Don’t encourage him,” Tony says. “He does this all the fucking time.”

 

Steve pats Dum-E’s arm. “He’s being helpful.”

 

The sketchbook is destroyed, the offending _fire-reminiscent_ orange still life doused in thick white foam. Tony picks it up and tries to siphon the foam off, but it’s largely a losing battle. “Looks like it’s a multimedia project, now,” he says. “Modern art.”

 

The artist takes his sketchbook back, grinning wryly. “Well, it’s better than most stuff in the MoMA, anyway.”

 

There’s foam in his hair. In his eyelashes. Tony can’t think of a single thing to say.

 

Steve looks up from his dripping, ruined sketchbook and catches Tony staring. “What? Is there foam dripping out of my nose, or something?”

 

He wipes his nose with his foamy sleeve. There wasn’t anything there before, but there is now. Steve doesn’t notice. “I wouldn’t be surprised,” he continues, “because Dum-E is _really_ thorough—“

 

Tony kisses him.

 

Steve makes a soft noise and pulls away. “You’ll get foam in your beard,” he murmurs.

 

“I have never given less of a fuck in my _life_ , Spangles—“

 

Their mouths crash together again, and this time it’s Steve tugging Tony in against him, hands big and careful on the side of Tony’s face, holding him _right there_ against his lips. Tony’s arms go around his waist, and Dum-E whirs and wheels around next to them, and he can feel Steve’s heart pounding strong through his chest, and _God,_ it burns.

 

Tony’s never felt this much _anything_ in his life, and here’s the issue:

 

Everything’s so simple, with Steve.

 

#

 

Just—

 

Sometimes Tony thinks about the absent way Maria used to pat his head. Like she read a parenting book, once, only she never got past the first page, and the first page said _children occasionally require physical contact with their parents to assure them of love._

 

#

 

Italy. Nice weather, wherever they are.

 

Christine polishes off her mimosa. She’s going to need it, for this part of the interview. “Just to be clear. We’re talking about the same Captain America who nearly killed you?”

 

“Pretty sure there’s only one, Everhart.”

 

She nods slowly. “And you’re saying _he’s_ responsible for your big transformation?”

 

“I don’t think it’s fair to blame him for all that.”

 

“Blame? I was going to thank him.”

 

Tony reaches for a mimosa, stops himself, and picks up a cup of coffee instead. Untouched, black, probably getting cold. He’s turned the corner, starting the return trip towards sober. “Look, when I met Steve, he hated my guts.”

 

Christine raises an eyebrow. “Past tense?”

 

“Yeah, past tense.”

 

“Because the rest of us didn’t sleep through that whole _civil war_ episode, you realize.” Christine picks up her own cold cup of coffee. Always drink what your subject is drinking, her mentor taught her. Lulls them into a false sense of security. “It looks an awful lot like—“

 

“I know what it looks like,” Tony snaps. “But—“

 

#

 

Everything’s so simple, with Steve.

 

At least it is from Tony’s point of view. There’s Steve and there’s the rest of the world. And Tony would die for both of them, alright, but he could never let _Steve_ die, not for anything. Not to save the planet, not to save the galaxy, not to save the universe. And he knows there are about a hundred logical fallacies in that statement, but his heart doesn’t care. His heart feels the permanent imprints of the way Steve used to kiss him when he wandered down to the lab in the middle of the night, sleepy and warm from their bed and fond in that amused way he always got when Tony forgot to look at the clock and stayed up for three days straight.

 

And yeah, they had a good go at trying to kill each other, for a hot second. But anyone who expects superheroes’ lovers’ spats to be anything but lethal is just kidding themselves.

 

Maybe. Maybe _Tony’s_ just kidding himself.

 

#

 

Italy.

 

“But—I don’t know, Everhart. Everyone says I was a jerk before I met Steve, before I became a part of the team and started saving the world, okay. Whatever. The thing is, I don’t think I changed at all. Before, I was just—unsettled, maybe.”

 

“And now you are? Settled?”

 

#

 

Tony has to adjust the gauntlet on his left hand.

 

They get foam all over the sheets, that first night. Tony uses his t-shirt to try and wipe most of it off Steve, but there’s a lot of Steve, and he doesn’t get it all. They laugh and shake the stuff out of their hair like dogs and come back, mouth to mouth, side by side. For a while it’s tug of war, back and forth, both of them trying to get the upper hand, but then neither of them succeeds so they just give up, just give in to the feeling of each other.

 

Fire extinguisher fluid and cum makes for a very sticky situation, so they stumble into the bathroom, turn on the shower. Tony realizes he still has his socks on, so he bends over the peel them off, and Steve pinches his bare ass. Tony repays him by biting his fingers, and Steve repays _that_ by sliding soap into him and finger-fucking him against the wall, hollowing his cheeks around Tony’s dick.

 

Right before Tony can hit his orgasm, just on the edge, Steve pulls off to say, “You might want to hold onto something.” Tony buries his hand in Steve’s wet hair and Steve hooks his fingers deep inside him and Tony cums on his face before Steve can even get his mouth back on him.

 

Tony laughs and says, “Jesus, Spangles.”

 

Steve presses a sticky kiss to the inside of Tony’s knee and stands, turning his face into the shower spray. “Looks like it’s officially ‘Get White Stuff on Steve’ day.”

 

Steve’s still hard, the flesh of his dick the same deep red as his kiss-bitten lips, but he steps out of the shower before Tony can do anything about it. Tony pulls on a silk dressing gown, but Steve’s still naked as they pull a fresh stack of sheets out of the closet and start to make the bed. “You know,” Tony says, “we could really just move to another room. There are plenty—“

 

The look Steve gives him stops the words in his throat. “But this is _our_ room, Tony.”

 

His chest is still heat-flushed from the shower, there are dark hickeys trailing down his neck, his dark blond hair’s sticking in a hundred different directions, and Tony can’t stand on the other side of the bed from him for another fucking second. He kneels on the mattress and pulls Steve on with him, and they tumble onto the half-made sheets.

 

Tony’s dick hasn’t gotten back with the program yet, but he sinks down onto Steve anyways. Steve rips the silk off his shoulders, and maybe they did that in reverse order, but who fucking cares. Tony rides him, and arousal is only a distant idea, but it doesn’t matter. This is about Steve, this is for Steve. Tony watches his face, listens to the way his breath catches, bends over to run the flat of his tongue over his nipples just to feel the way Steve’s hips snap up, gently, like he’s trying to stop himself.

 

He commits it all to memory, catalogues it. Every hitch, every gasp, every tiny intonation of his palms moving over Tony’s skin, the way his fingers sink in when Tony sits down slow.

 

#

 

It’s just—

 

No one ever seems to love Tony as much as he loves them. It’s different, with Steve.

 

#

 

Tony has to adjust the gauntlet on his left hand.

 

In the morning when he wakes up, Steve’s already awake. He’s laying on his side, head resting on his hand, just watching Tony. And it’s a small thing, a _tiny_ thing, but his parents were never in the house when he woke up, Pepper was always halfway out the door, and. And. Steve leans in, and Tony says _morning breath_ , and he says _I don’t care_.

 

The dawn light is soft through their window and Steve’s calluses skim over Tony’s beard, catching on the stubble that’s sprung up outside the lines. He drags his lips away slow, only to press a kiss to Tony’s nose, his forehead. His voice would be a whisper if it weren’t so sure:

 

_Marry me._

 

Tony jolts a little, and Steve laughs, but it’s that same private laugh he laughed in the shower last night, just fond, fond, _endlessly_ fond over _Tony,_ of all people. For a half a second Tony wants to say _what the fuck, Steve_ , and _are you sure?_ but those aren’t words that belong here.

 

Of course he’s sure. Of course Steve’s sure, as sure as Tony’s sure. And maybe he’s saying _sure_ a lot, maybe Steve looks a little worried until he shifts over to _yes_ , but even when Steve hated Tony and Tony (pretend) hated him back, they were the most important people in each other’s lives.

 

He’ll have to adjust the gauntlet to fit the ring, he says.

 

Steve smiles.

 

#

 

It was different, with Steve.

 

#

 

 _Italia_.

 

“And now you are? Settled?”

 

Tony doesn’t say anything. Christine watches him closely, because she might be about to break the story of the century, and she’s not going to let _Tony Stark_ ruin it for her, even if it _is_ about him. Him and Captain America, anyhow. She recognizes the lump he’s rubbing through his dress shirt—it’s a ring. She knows that look on his face, that thousand-yard stare of lost love. “Mr. Stark?” she prods.

 

He snaps out of it. “What’s the one thing you care about more than anything else in the world, Everhart? _Vanity Fair?_ Breaking a story first?”

 

Christine figures she owes him some honesty. “My neice. She’s three.”

 

Tony smiles distantly. “Terrible age, three. When I was three I flooded the basement. Howard parked a car in the driveway, threw in a pillow, and wouldn’t let me inside for a week.”

 

Christine will leave that part out of her article. She’s not a _monster_.

 

Tony shakes his head, smiling like that’s a _fond_ memory. “Anyway. Your niece. I bet when you’re with her, it really puts the rest of the world in perspective.” He waits for an answer; Christine nods. “You probably fall into bed with less billionaires, since she was born.”

 

“Fewer,” Christine corrects.

 

“Whatever, Yale. The point is, before Steve, I didn’t have that sort of thing, all right? I didn’t have that one thing that I loved more than anything else. I had a _million_ things, which is no good. I wasn’t focused. And now I am. I’m focused.”

 

“Focused on Steve?”

 

Tony looks out at the piazza for what’s probably the first time since they sat down. It’s not crowded, but it’s not empty—there are a few families of tourists ducking in against the walls for shade, a few couples throwing coins in the fountain despite the sign that says not to.

 

He turns back to her. “Look, Everhart,” he says. “I woke up and smelled the roses, and I realized that I just want the same thing as everyone else on this fucking planet.”

 

She raises an eyebrow. “What’s that?”

 

#

 

Everyone loves differently, Tony.

 

Howard loves like lightning, Maria loves like she read about how to do it in a book, Pepper loves by trying to fix you, Rhodey loves like the best goddamn friend in the entire goddamn world, Dum-E loves by spraying you with a fire extinguisher even when you’re not on fire.

 

 _You_ , Tony _,_ you love _all in_. You drink the whole bottle and you build suits to save the people you care about when you can’t be there yourself and you agree to marry someone after _one night_. You invite the whole team to stay and you order one of everything off the menu at that schwarma place and you’d die for the whole world, but you’d die for any one of them, too.

 

Steve…Steve’s still figuring out how to love more than one thing at once.

 

#

 

Some stuff happens that’s not important. The press calls it _civil war._

 

It’s hardly the first lovers’ spat in history with a body count. He remembers what Rhodey said to him, after that birthday he thought was gonna be his last: _it’s called tough love._

 

That’s what Steve needs. Some tough love.

 

Only Tony loses, and then all he’s got to show for it is a burner phone. He guesses he should be glad there wasn’t a wedding ring in that envelope. Maybe that means something.

 

He waits to call, because he’s still got some pride. But he _does_ call, from the contruction site of the rebuild of the Malibu house, Dum-E in the back seat of his convertible, the framed Dum-E painting in the passenger seat. The sun’s setting, and it’s been a year, and Tony’s tired.

 

Steve answers on the first ring. Tony shouldn’t be surprised.

 

For a long moment, neither of them says anything. Then Tony hears Steve’s breath hitch, and his voice comes over the grainy line: “Tony, are you—“

 

“I’m not in danger, no.”

 

Steve exhales, a cascade of white noise.

 

Tony suddenly can’t sit still—he opens the car door and gets out, pacing to the edge of the cliff. “I’m just…” he swallows. “I still wear my ring. I mean, on a chain around my neck, but—“

 

“Tony,” Steve interrupts him. “I—me too. On my finger.”

 

The ocean vista blurs. Tony rubs his eyes, but they’re still hot and damp. “Steve,” he says, and it comes out raspy. “I think we need to…”

 

“Yeah,” Steve says. “Yeah, I know. You remember that honeymoon we never took? Because we got derailed by the—“

 

“That robot thing in Los Angeles, yeah.”

 

“Two days.” Tony’s heart clenches in anticipation, like it’s remembering the feel of Steve’s hands on him even though his skin’s forgotten. “Meet me there.”

 

“Okay,” Tony says. “See you soon, Spangles.”

 

He can hear Steve’s smile. “See you soon.”

 

Tony hangs up first. He puts the phone back in his pocket, and exhales hard. In the car on the cliff behind him, Dum-E’s banging his arm against the back of the driver’s seat headrest, impatient to get going and rejoin the other bots. And Tony…

 

Tony knows this isn’t going to be easy. Neither of them are good at apologizing, especially when neither of them think they have anything to apologize for. But it used to be simple, and maybe it still is.

 

Maybe it’s as simple as deciding _Steve_ matters more than anything else, and sticking to it.

 

#

 

It’s not that no one’s ever loved Tony. It’s just, no one’s ever gone all in.

 

#

 

Now.

 

“What’s that?” Christine asks.

 

Tony opens his mouth like he’s about to answer, then closes it, shakes his head. “You don’t want to hear about that. You want to hear about our Italian clean energy initiatives. That’s why you asked me to sit down with you today, Everhart, remember?”

 

Christine leans closer to him over the table. “Frankly, Mr. Stark, I don’t give a damn about clean energy initiatives.” She waits a beat, then asks again, “What do you want in life?”

 

Tony’s looking at something over her shoulder, eyes fond. She resists the urge to turn around, afraid she’ll break the moment. “I told you,” he says. “I want the same thing as everyone else. A happy home, someone who loves me, a few moments of peace. That’s all.”

 

Christine feels someone walk up behind her, and turns around.

 

Steve Rogers stands next to their table, watching Tony like there’s no one else in the world.

 

Christine suddenly wishes she’d brought a video camera instead of a tape recorder, but her prose is fucking fantastic, so she’ll be able to immortalize the moment, anyway. Her eyes flicker to Steve’s gold wedding band as he sinks his hand in Tony’s hair, leans down, and kisses him.

 

“Hey, Spangles,” Tony says, when Steve pulls away. “Fancy seeing you here.”

 

Steve smiles a private smile. “Did you pregame our reunion?”

 

Tony glances sheepishly at the empty mimosa glasses. “I was nervous,” he says. “Sue me.”

 

Christine clears her throat. They both turn to look at her, Steve still with one hand on the back of Tony’s head. “Sorry to interrupt,” she says, “but if you have a wedding photo I can put on the cover, this issue of _Vanity Fair_ will sell more copies than any magazine in history.”

 

Tony stands from his seat, half-hauled by Steve. Hurriedly, he tosses enough euros down on the table to cover their brunch ten times over. “Just, uh—put a picture of my ass on the cover. It’s—“

 

“A very popular ass, yes. I’ve heard.”

 

Steve drags Tony away. Christine gets up out of her chair, tape recorder in hand. “Mr. Stark!” she tries. “Captain Rogers! Or is it Captain _Stark-_ Rogers?”

 

They ignore her, already halfway across the piazza. Christine swears, scrambles to get her cell out of her pocket, and snaps a few pictures before they’re out of sight.

 

Her boss is going to yell about the quality, but they’ll make do.

 

Captain America and Tony Stark, arms around each other’s waists, stumbling sideways over the cobblesones because they can’t be bothered to slow down to kiss.

 

 _Civil War,_ Christine’s brain says. _Civil union._ There’s got to be something she can do with that.

 

#

 

Some bed, some city, probably still Italy, doesn’t matter.

 

Tangled sheets, bare skin. Tony spins Steve’s wedding ring over and over around his finger, ear pressed to his heartbeat, head moving with the gentle rise-and-fall of his breathing.

 

Steve presses a warm, sleepy kiss to the crown of his head. “Marry me,” he murmurs.

 

Tony smiles. “Always.”

 

All in.

**Author's Note:**

> this is A Big Mess and i'm sorry


End file.
